The Pasture of a Vale
by Uozumi
Summary: Five years after the end of season five, Dean runs into two young men he let down spectacularly when he could have helped both of them in their separate times of need. SPOILERS.


**Fandom** _Supernatural_  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)** Adam, Ben, Christian, Dean, Sam; no pairings intended, take it as you will  
**Genre** Drama/Fantasy/Family/Future!fic/Supernatural  
**Rating** PG-13  
**Word Count** 1970  
**Disclaimer** Supernatural c. Kripke, CW, WB  
**Summary** Five years after the end of season five, Dean runs into two young men he let down spectacularly when he could have helped both of them in their separate times of need.  
**Warning(s)** blanket spoilers up through season six episode six, direct spoilers from season five episode twenty-two, season six episode one, episode four, and episode six, brief mentions of character deaths, some angst  
**Notes** This fic is a melding of two fics I've been working on off and on for the past couple weeks. Also for those playing along at home, the Biblical Adam was the first golem and the Chupacabra's true form can be found by Google site searching National Geographic's website for chupacabra and Halloween.

_**In the Pasture of a Vale**_

There was frost on the pumpkins around him and it was only ten days away from Halloween. Dean watched his breath condense in the air, barely lit by the first quarter moon. He was in a pasture in a vale searching for signs of his prey. A twig snapped to his right and Dean turned, lifting his gun only to find a similar sawed off gun pointing right back at him by a man in an oversized sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. The hooded man's hand did not waiver, but before he could open his mouth, a teenager appeared and forced the man's arm downward. "Wait," the teen's voice suddenly shot up in pitch as his sentence rushed out of his mouth, "he's one of us."

"Ben?" Dean asked and lowered his gun slightly.

The teenager turned to face Dean. He was taller and thinner, but he still had the same haircut. "Yeah." Recognition flashed across his face, and he let his companion go. "Looking for an Auloniad?"

"No." Dean shook his head. "Chupacabra." His gaze shifted from Ben to the man whose sweatshirt hood obscured his facial features. "Everyone knows they're mangy coyotes, but someone wanted it confirmed."

"If you're looking for a coyote with mange," the man pulled his hood back, "there's a dead one down the road." He held Dean's gaze, neither looking away for a long moment, silence gripping the trio.

Ben watched Dean's features twist into several emotions ranging from pain to guilt as the blonde man's face twitched, trying to remain impassive but failing. Ben shifted his weight and nudged the blonde man. "Adam…?"

"I should shoot you," Adam impulsively said to Dean, "but that'd be a favor."

"Do you think I wanted you to become Michael?" Dean kept his gun at the ready, planning to aim for Adam's shooting hand if he had to. "I wouldn't have – "

"That's not what I'm talking about." Adam interrupted. His arm twitched but Ben's hand grabbed it before Adam could pull the gun back up to point it at Dean.

Ben kept a firm grip on Adam's arm and an eye on Dean's gun. "Maybe you should talk about this without the guns?" He licked his lips, trying to think of a solution. "There's a diner down the street. There was an arcade at the turnpike. You know, somewhere you can't just shoot people?"

Adam remained tense. Dean lowered his gun almost all the way. Dean was not sure this was a conversation they could have in public. "Then what are you talking about?"

Adam's eyes narrowed. "The warehouse." At Dean's blank expression, Adam elaborated, "In Lansing. You and those Campbell people would come in and out carting 'creatures.'"

The moon went behind a cloud and neither Ben nor Adam could make out Dean's expression. "I was only there twice." Dean lowered his gun completely. "Everything was under tarps." Dean tried to think back.

The warehouse in Lansing was large and some smells burnt his nose when he inhaled. Each storage area was different. Sometimes they were warehouses, sometimes they were old veterinary clinics, sometimes old schools; anywhere the Campbell clan could stuff creatures without the authorities catching them. Every time he was in one, Dean found himself wanting to get out as quickly as possible. Christian and Sam led the way through a maze of metal shelves filled with miscellaneous items of things recovered from various hunts. The Campbells, along with a few other long-standing hunting families, were hiding such things to keep them out of the hands of the general public.

"Don't touch anything," Christian said and cast a sidelong glance back at Dean. Sam and Christian pushed a cart covered in a tarp. Dean was not sure what was underneath, but it was most likely a creature or a humanoid.

"Do I look like I want to turn into some sort of smurf?" Dean retorted as they passed a bronze statuette that looked reminiscent of Papa Smurf only fatter and more demonic.

Christian gave Dean a look and then turned his head to a padlocked door up ahead. He reached into his pocket and handed a set of keys to Dean. "We can't stop the cart until we've chained it in its spot or change its speed abruptly. You know what to do. It's key number three."

Dean snatched the keys. He had never been to this particular warehouse before, but it was the third warehouse of its kind he had been to and worked about the same. The first large room was for object storage and the next large room was creature and humanoid storage. Dean unlocked the door and pushed it back, letting Sam and Christian through with their cart. The room also burnt their noses with the smell of chemicals that tried to cover up the smell of excrement and sweat. Dear proceeded before anyone cared to instruct him to the back of the first partitioned section of the room where a set of chains hung loosely, secured to the wall. He kept to tunnel vision, not looking to any cage he passed. His back tensed, he grabbed up the largest chain, and started heading back to Sam and Christian. He would have to chain the cage while it was moving without causing it to speed up suddenly or stop.

As Dean started to hook the cart to the chains on the wall, the cart rolled over a puddle of urine on the ground, slicking the wheels and causing the cart to gain speed abruptly. The cage instantly rattled with enough force to shake the cart from Sam and Christian's hands, smashing Dean into a cage to his right and behind him. The tarp of the cage Dean hit slipped up, exposing Dean to the creature behind the bars. Dean hooked the largest chain to the shaking cart and cage, taking the cage to the face once in the process. Christian quickly moved and took the second chain from the wall and hooked it into the cage before he and Sam wrestled the cart into its proper position, locking the wheels to slots in the floor.

Dean took a step away from the cage he was shoved up against, but something held him back. He looked over his shoulder in time to watch Christian unhook two human hands from Dean's shirt and pushed them back between the cage's bars. He pulled the tarp back where it belonged soon after.

"What…?" Dean stared at the covered cage.

"Golem," Sam answered. "Created from mud or clay and made humanoid." He started to steer Dean back towards the warehouse's exit now that the newest acquisition had calmed down in its chained position. "They caught him a little before they found me."

The memory swirled in Dean's mind. He looked at Adam and Ben. A coyote's howl echoed from somewhere in the forest outside the pasture. He looked at Adam and felt sick. "Golem my ass," Dean muttered to himself. The memories shifted and led to memories of Sam's eventual demise. Dean shook his head to clear it. "I didn't know," he said loud enough for Adam to hear. He knew it was a lame excuse but it was the truth. Soon after that incident, they had to get on a plane and got to Scotland to blackmail Crowley. On the second airsickness bag, Dean forgot all about the arms from the cage.

Adam finally lowered his gun completely and moved his arm from Ben's grasp. "If you want to talk to him," he turned to Ben, "you can. I'm going to find the nymph before sunrise." He pulled his hood back over his head and resumed the trek across the large pasture to a small river just out of Ben and Dean's sight.

Ben approached Dean slowly. "You never came back." Ben put his hands into the pockets of the leather jacket Dean passed to him on his eleventh birthday and then took them back out, thinking better of the gesture.

"Your mom…" Dean started and then tucked his gun back between his shirt and the waistband of his jeans, "well, both of us knew it wasn't working. It happens, comes with the job." Dean watched Ben fidget with his hands, having no good place to put them. "Does she know you're out here?"

Ben shook his head. He looked up at the moon when the cloud cover moved. "I tried to call you, but you changed your number." He put his hands back in his pocket and took them back out again. "I came home from school one day and the house was gone."

"Gone?" Dean found his voice.

"Yeah, the yard, the trees, the whole house – everything. There was just flat ground left." Ben's eyes found Dean's eyes then. "I tried to call you, tried to get you to come out and look at it, but your phone wouldn't even ring." He folded his arms loosely. "I tried to hitchhike up to that one guy's house we stayed at in South Dakota. Somehow I ended up in Michigan…I was at this roadhouse and ran into Adam." He scuffed his foot on an old fallen log. "His mom died by a ghoul. We've been going around the country like this for a year and a half now."

Dean pursed his lips and studied Ben. He reached out and put a hand on Ben's shoulder. "Look, if I'd known, I would have showed up." He searched the sky for words. "I didn't want to get the two of you mixed up in this."

"But we were." Ben moved away from Dean. "We got 'mixed up in this' a long time ago." He unfolded his arms. "You showed up and then just took off. What were we supposed to do? The weird things started a year later." Ben shook his head. "What was I supposed to do? You're the only hunter I had a way of contacting."

Dean did not know how to answer. The coyote howled again, the howl closer than the previous one. Dean turned towards that direction, then reached into his pocket, and handed Ben a piece of paper. "This is my number. If I change it, I'll let you know. If you need anything, you can call it."

Ben took the paper and put it in the front pocket of his jeans. "Thanks." He turned towards the direction Adam left in earlier. "I should help Adam. Nymphs are hard to get information from."

Dean nodded. "Be careful, Ben."

"You too." Ben snorted. "I'm not the one going after the sick coyotes." He offered a small wave and started at a light jog after Adam.

Dean watched Ben disappear towards the river and down the bank. Once the teenager was gone, Dean followed the road, pulling his gun back out from the waistband of his jeans. As Adam stated there was a dead coyote on the side of the road, its mange so bad it barely had any fur left. Dean reached into his pocket and took a picture of it with his phone. Farther down the road, he made contact with the other coyote also ravaged by mange. The kill shot echoed through the vale. Dean carefully dug a ways out from the side of the road, burnt the coyote's corpses just in case there was more to the Chupacabra myth, and buried the remains.

Dusting his hands off on his pants, Dean started back to where he parked the impala and then paused. He looked across the vale, past the pasture, and towards the river. He saw no sign of Adam or Ben, but for a brief moment, he caught the Auloniad escaping to her watery bedroom just before the first rays of sunlight crested the eastern cliff.

**The End**


End file.
